The Liz Moody Podcast - What You THINK You Want In A Partner Is Ruining Your Love Life

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

I chat with a top relationship researcher who shares shocking data on what actually leads to a compatible, successful relationship. If you want to know if you’ve found the one, or what you should actually be looking for while dating, this episode is for you. Dr. Paul Eastwick is a professor of psychology at UC Davis. He has led dozens of studies on the science of attraction, and he's the author of the best-selling book Bonded By Evolution. In this episode, he shares the real data around the relationship questions or thoughts we’ve all had. 🎧 What you’ll learn: • Why the traits we think matter most for compatibility (values, politics, looks) barely predict long-term relationship success • What men and women actually want in a partner vs. what they say they want • The two-part psychological framework that predicts whether your relationship will thrive long-term • Why physical attraction to your partner works completely differently than "objective" hotness • The real reason attraction fades and how couples can bring it back • The #1 warning sign that a relationship is heading toward a breakup • Why "love at first sight" happens to some people and not others • The truth about red flags, sparks, and soulmates • One simple daily habit to transform how you show up in relationships For more from Paul Eastwick: • Podcast, Love Factually: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-factually/id1766543146 • Book, Bonded by Evolution: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0593593987?tag=randohouseinc7986-20  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauleastwick/  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • Puori: visit https://Puori.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY at checkout for a discount and special offer. • LMNT: head to DrinkLMNT.com/Liz to get a FREE 8-count sample pack with any order. • Timeline: visit Timeline.com/Liz to save up to 39% off. • OneSkin: go to OneSkin.co/Liz and use code LIZ to get 15% OFF for a limited time. • IQBar: text LIZ to 64000 for 20% off.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 460. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All the things that we think should generate compatibility really don't seem to matter all that much. Wait, when you say the things that we think should, like I think values, I think politics, I think wanting the same things in life. I think being probably similar levels of attractive. Do those things matter? Unfortunately, none of these things end up predicting all that much. So here's the kicker. I was curious about the science behind how we can really know if we've found the one, the best

person for us, whether we're dating or in a long-term relationship, and on the flip side, how to actually know if you're in the wrong relationship, if you should not be in that relationship anymore. I'm joined today by Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at UC Davis. He has led dozens of studies on the Science of Attraction, and he's the author of the best-selling book, Bonded by Evolution. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that.

Paul, you have actual real data about stuff that a lot of us just wonder or vibe about. So let's start with what do you think are the three most important elements for long-term relationship success? Top three for long-term relationship success. I am somebody who cares a lot about what we call attachment theory. And in attachment theory, there are these twin components. So I'm going to use two of my three picks on these two elements here, which are called Safe Haven and Secure Base. Safe Haven refers to the idea that you can use somebody as a base of support when you're feeling down, when you've had a loss of some kind, when you're struggling with something, that you feel like this is the kind of person who's going to help pick you up and get you back on your feet. This is really, really critical.

The happiest close relationships, people do this for each other in spades, and in unhappy relationships, people really stop supporting each other in this way. So that's number one. And then the second one, the twin of that is we call it secure base. But what that means is that you're lifting your partner up

when something good happens to them. you're celebrating their successes, that their wins become your wins to an extent. In attachment theory, this is a real yin and yang situation where what you do is you go to somebody when you feel down, they help bring you back, and then you go back out, you have the successes, and then that same person celebrates with you. Okay. So those are two of the three that I'm going to pick. And the third one, I do think that having a sexual connection with somebody is especially

important. We see the sexual satisfaction is a really powerful predictor of relationship satisfaction. So I'm going to throw that one in there too. Yeah. Did it that come out higher in the research that you did than we thought? So we didn't think that sexual attraction was that big of a deal. But then it turns out for both men and women, it really is. Yeah. So we've done a lot of research looking at this distinction between what men and women say they're looking for in a partner and what do they actually want in a partner. And there are many ways of approaching this problem. But it is true that when you ask men and women to rate a bunch of traits on scales, men will say they care about things like sexiness and attractiveness more than women do. But we can also look to see how much those attributes predict how

satisfied you are with your relationship. And what it turns out is that both men and women are underestimating how much attractiveness, like feeling that your partner is sexy to you. They underestimate how important that is for their long-term relationship satisfaction. I'm going to come back to the secure base, the attachment stuff. Yeah. But is there a difference between feeling like your partner is attractive or sexy to you and feeling like they're attractive or sexy to the world? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, this is an enormous difference. And I'm a psychologist. So I care a lot about the subjective. And whenever we look at research on close relationships, the subjective is really, really, really key. And what I mean by that is like, look, if I'm in this relationship, if I feel that my partner is sexy, if I feel that my partner supports me or would celebrate me if something good happened, that's by far the most important thing. And the quote unquote objective reality, what other people think about my relationship, it tends to dwindle an importance. Now, that's not

100% true. For example, it's really nice when like your friends and family like your partner. That's pretty important. But I usually encourage people like you know subjectively whether you're getting what you need out of this relationship or not. And independent observers, unless there's somebody who lives with you, which could be the case, outside of circumstances like that, They just know less about what it's like to be in that relationship. So the subjective sense of what your partner is like really is the key predictor we find. Are people happier, though, if they're, like, in a relationship with an Angelina, Joe Lee, or who's that really tall guy? Paul.

Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of these people that, like, people are like, oh, my God, they're so hot. If you're in a relationship with a version of that type of person. I think when we think about those relationships in the abstract, it's easy to think like, yeah, of course I'd want to be in a relationship with Paul Meskell. The reality is somebody's objective hotness has no relationship at all with whether they or their partner are happy in a long-term relationship. It's just no correlation. It matters at first, right? Paul Meskell is going to be able to get plenty of first dates, as would Angelina Jolie, as would any other very attractive person. So you get more at-bats for being physically attractive. But its influence fades over time.

It matters what your partner thinks. But that objective consensual desirability in the long run really doesn't predict all that much. That's so interesting. I'm thinking about it particularly. I hear from a lot of women who are worried their partner is becoming less attracted to them as they age. And I'm curious how that would play into your research. It's interesting. Generally, when you look at couples as they age over time,

it's not that they don't experience decreases in sexual desire. It's just, it's a lot less than you would think. I think there's a real tendency to assume like when I'm 64, nobody's going to be attracted to me. Yeah, when everything's like sagging and blah, blah, blah. Exactly. It's really not that stark. on average, your relationship partner really doesn't decrease in their attraction to you all that much.

Now, I'm talking about the relationships that make it, of course. It's like something to attend to, something to talk about with your partner, but it's far from an inevitability. And again, that subjective sense of what's going on in the relationship can be very different from what the outside world thinks. Why is that? Like, is it because we're viewing our partner as this whole collection of traits and experience? So we're not like, oh, your skin is saggy, your butts hanging low. It is that. It is absolutely that.

I think a lot of it is a lot of what is sexy about our partners is tied up with history and our little culture that we create together. The games we play with each other, the way that we can sort of reference prior things that we found attractive about each other. And this is something, I think, too, that in the science, we've underplayed, which is when you get to know somebody over a long period of time, that whole relationship really takes on a life of its own. And that can be where a lot of the joy comes from. It can be where a lot of the challenges come from, too. Like, how did we create this

pattern in the first place where when you wake up, you know, you really want to have the coffee ready, but I don't have the coffee ready. And then like we end up fighting about this thing, it's like these small disagreements that can end up taking over. But, The good stuff also tends to work this way. It's like we create our relationships and they tend to go the best when we can like lean into the good stuff. So going back to the attachment stuff, it's secure base. Yeah, secure base and safe haven. You think about it there's like support when you're down and support when you've had an accomplishment, support when you're up.

So if somebody's listening and they're like, uh, shoot, already, I don't have those in my relationship. Can we build those in or are they just innately there or not there? You can absolutely build those in. It is probably the kind of thing that's going to require an explicit conversation or two or ten to craft a new way of interacting with each other that's going to help bring those things out. Maybe for some people it would be as easy as, hey, when I told you about that work project that I was excited about yesterday, you seemed like you weren't really paying attention or you kind of blew me off. And so as a result, like, I felt like I had to talk to my friend instead. But that was a bummer. I would like to get your enthusiasm about these things.

I would like you to see how important these things are to me. I feel like I'm in a session right now. And so what can I do where I can really get your attention and kind of feel that enthusiasm that, you know, I know you've had for me in other context. Maybe I approached you at the wrong time of day. Maybe there's a better time. maybe I need to say something to cue you like, hey, this really matters to me. Those kinds of conversations over time, I think you can start building some of these things in.

How much can people really change? Most therapists think that you've got to be able to change at least the way that you're interacting. Maybe not who you are as a person. Maybe not like or what your preferences are. You're a morning person or an evening person. What do you like to do with your time? These things are hard to change. But the way we interact, the way we approach each other, the way we spend time apart,

I think these things can change with enough, like, time, effort, and maybe coaching. This is always a really key thing with thinking about relationships. You got the two people involved, and of course people have their personalities and their preferences. but over time people create this third thing called the relationship. And when you think about it like something we've created together, I think you see the double-edged sword there. It's like, oh, this is going badly, but it is due to choices we've made.

How can we like rewind some of these things back up and try to try to recreate what we have here? That can be very effortful, but I find it to be kind of a hopeful message. in the end because it means like a lot of this is under our control. Well, and it means that even if you're like, oh, babe, that feels really unnatural to me. Like, I wouldn't naturally support you in that way or whatever. It's like, no, even if you're this type of person, you can learn to have this type of interaction. Exactly. I think for most people in most relationships, they wouldn't sit there and say, my partner has

never celebrated me once. They can think of a time or a few times, hopefully where it's happened. And you point back to that. This is what I mean by like the history thing. It's like, no, but that worked. That time was really good. You were really happy for me when I ran that half marathon. So how do I elicit that from you again?

I think a lot of people can work with, you know, that kind of framework. And if we're listening and we're like, I want to make sure I'm that for my partner. Is there anything you can do to really ground that in like pragmatic things we can do to be that for the person that we love? I think be curious. I think a lot of couples struggle with, but it's really important, is figure out, like, hey, did I screw that up? Acknowledge the mistakes and also try to figure out like, okay, what could I do better next time? It's hard when you're doing everything so perfectly. Yeah.

And it's just your partner who's messing up ever. I know. Right. See, this is another issue. It's like, it's so tempting to think that. I don't know. It's like, but I know. But I did it right.

I know I did it right. Well, I'll also say people in like this world were like, I'm listening to the podcast. I'm reading the books. I'm really putting in the work here. Like they're just kind of going about their life. So I'm the one who probably is right, which I do think is a very tempting thought. I'm joking. But like, I do think that is a tempting thought.

Yeah. It is far easier to change the structure of the interaction, the way you relate to each other than it is to change to change the other person. I'm here just giving you like the starting point, right? A lot of this, like you want to make a change in your relationship. It has to be done in collaboration. Like it's not like you're going to come up with something that's going to change your partner and like make them like something different. It has to be a conversation. So I think of these tips as like they're conversation starters.

but you only have like a little bit of the edge over your partner. Like just you're bringing your partner up to speed. I saw an Instagram post the other day that was like the difference between successful long-term couples and non-successful long-term couples is how they repair after arguments. Yeah, that's a big component of it. Like the way that you come back together, you can like revisit what happened, but not a way that just like restarts the fight all over again. And a lot of times it's these like bids for connection and responding to your partner when they make a bid to you for connection.

That is a huge component of how couples can recover. I'm so bad at that. Yeah. Where do you struggle exactly with? Is it, you don't want to give the bids or when the bids come your way? Both. But I'm like really bad at saying I'm sorry. I'm really working on it.

Yeah. And I get really like black and white with my thinking of like, we're in a bad place, we're in a good place. And we're in a bad place. Then I'm like, I don't. Why are you hugging me? We're in a bad place. We're fighting right now. Yeah.

I mean, do you ever just acknowledge that thought? Like, why are we hugging right now? But then go through with it anyway. Just like, just keep moving. Even for a few moments, like, this is what we should be doing. No. We're trying to recover. That's my gut instinct is like, yeah, there is a certain amount of, like, to move through it and see what happens.

I mean, this is certainly what I've seen in friends, other couples, my own relationships is sometimes it's like there's a sense like you don't want to. And you do it anyway. You do it anyway. You get to the other side and you're like, you know what? I'm glad I did. Now, that's not to say like sometimes you really do need some time out and go be on your own and cool down. I mean, this is also a very good tactic. But knowing the balance.

The sexual part's also really interesting to me because I hear from. a lot of people who feel like they're in that roommate mode with their partner. And they want to know how doomed is the relationship if you are in that roommate phase. It's certainly not doomed. There are a number of things that couples can do to rekindle the passion. A lot of it has to do with thinking about sex and sexual connection as a process of discovering another person again. So one thing we know in the science is that passion tends to dwindle once, you know, you feel like you know everything about this person. It's like your intimacy, your closeness is very, very high. And so when you feel like you know everything about this person, the passion tends to fade.

But of course, we all go out into the world and have other experiences. And sometimes these other experiences make us grow and see things in a different way. Sometimes we can do those things with our partner and just the excitement of doing something novel, especially if it's something kind of exciting, like more exciting than just going to a movie. If you're going paragliding together or something active, these things can be helpful for rekindling passion. And also like, I mean, again, I do believe in the school of Esther Perel. So recultivating a little bit of the mystery there can be helpful too. So there are lots of possibilities.

Things aren't necessarily doomed. But it's not the kind of thing you want to just let go and ignore. What I love about what you said is that I said sex. I said the bedroom. And you said, actually, let's take this outside of the bedroom. Like passion is not just what happened when you are in bed. And I think that's a really important distinction. Yeah.

Everything is connected to how you interact, how you relate. The things you're doing for each other, the things you're not. doing for each other. It's all sort of one giant, beautiful, tangled mess. And it can be hard to work on because everything is connected to everything else. Like, okay, great. Like, we want to rekindle the passion. Like, he told us to go parasailing. Well, when are we going to do that? Because last I checked, I got to get both kids to soccer practice this week. Like, I absolutely get it. And these are the real challenges. It's like, there are so many things. that couples do together.

And probably more than at any time in recent history, couples are having to sort of organize more, do more. They've got less help, less family nearby. So these things can be real challenges. So is the absence of these three things, the reasons why couples tend to break up after a long time together? According to the research, what are the top reasons that long-term relationships fizzle out? The number one predictor of breakup is that subjective sense. that you can see yourself in this relationship in the future, whether it's one years out or five

years out or ten years out. Like if that future is starting to feel fuzzy and you're starting to wonder if you want it, that's probably the number one danger sign. And we call that sense commitment, but I find it's helpful to make it more concrete by asking people a year from now, five years from now, are you still with this person. I think when people are in dating relationships, that sense is more acute because the time frame is compressed. So like if you're dating somebody in March, you're making plans for the summer, and I'm like, oh, that's pretty good. That means I can envision myself being with this person a few months from now. In longer term relationships that collapse of the future time horizon, it can sometimes happen rapidly as people realize like this is something I don't want to be in anymore.

But I think that's probably the number one thing because you can go through hard times. You can experience a lot of anger and frustration at your partner. But if you still feel like you are going to be together in the future, that's a good sign. So does having doubts about a relationship mean that it's time to let go of it? Oh, not necessarily. And most relationships do go through periods of turbulence where people question things. The tendency for people when they're dating to break up and get back together, I think it's probably more common than people realize.

Like, most relationships actually don't have a clear, steady trajectory. A lot of times when people first meet, at least classically, you know, when we look at couples and we rewind time all the way to the beginning when they first met each other. On average, most people they first met, they thought, yeah, this person seems all right. kind of middling on average. Some people experience love at first sight. Some people are really not hot for their future partner at first sight. Things grow gradually.

And there's a lot of ups and downs, especially early. And of course, long-term relationships go through their difficulties too. So I don't think doubts, certainly if they're time limited, that that's not a terrible sign. This is absolutely something that's going to happen. but the sustained sense that you don't see a future together, that would be a bigger warning sign, I think. Wait, tell me about love at first sight. Is there research on what that is?

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that we know it happens. We know it probably happens a little bit more often to men than to women, but it's going to happen for both genders. And we're sure it's love for men. They're not just, like, horny. Well, I mean, what is the difference? I mean, there is.

But all these things are wrapped up together. I mean, that's what's kind of amazing, right? Is it like men, they're a little bit more eager early on in all the ways. And yes, that includes in terms of sexual attraction. But it also includes things like men are the ones who tend to say, I love you first. But is that just because society kind of dictates that, too? Like, I remember when Zach and I first got together and all my friends were like, do you think he's going to say, I love you tonight? And I was like, I could just say I love you to him.

But I felt like it was his responsibility almost. That's interesting. That is totally possible. The explanation today that I find very compelling is that one reason that men are a little more eager to get into relationships in the first place and they're a little bit more eager to take things to the next level and they're a little bit less eager to break up is that women tend to have more. solid, more grounded social networks outside the primary partnership than men do. So men, you know, these days, they're just a little bit more desperate for that romantic connection. Now, this is not everybody.

This is a modest gender difference, but I think it really says something about where we are these days. I definitely have a lot of girlfriends where that is like a felt sense. I think what's frustrating is they're not often like, I need it more, so I'm going to give more of myself. You're like, so step up extra, you know what I mean? Yeah. So this is like the major challenge of our time is men, you need more out of these relationships. But how are we going to get you to do more in these relationships? This is a major issue. Like men got to get their friends back. Yeah. If a guy has at least like one or two other

people that he can go to when he's experiencing challenges. That's great. I mean, I actually do think it's very important that couples can go to each other for support. I think it's really good if he feels like he can be emotionally vulnerable with his partner. That's really good for him. It's really good for the relationship. And also providing support provides benefits. But there's a limit to these things. It's important that we have other people we go to. Like putting it all on one person is just a little risky and it can be a little much. One of the things that I love about your work is there's a lot of evolutionary thoughts that people in certain parts of the Internet are using to justify where men are acting like, what women are acting like. And you use science to debunk a lot of these things.

But I want to bring you back to love at first sight. Okay, excellent. What's happening there? It's happening more for men. Men are falling in love at first sight more. Yes. Think about it this way. When you meet somebody at first, there's like a certain level.

of popularity that that person has, a certain level of like consensual desirability. Sometimes we call this thing meat value. That's like the technical term. But really what it means is what's the average rating that people would give you? Around that average is a lot of variability. Predicting that variability, like why is it that everybody else thinks she's a six, but I think she's a 10? That is one of the central challenges of the science right now.

So we know that it happens, and it's quite common, that I'll just think this person is far more wonderful than everybody else does, right? And if I'm at a 10, and I've just met that person, we would call that love at first sight. But why I experienced it for her and not for somebody else, that is the gigantic mystery that we're trying to unravel. And all we know at this point is that there are a lot of things that can't explain it, but we haven't yet figure. out what does. Do you have a hypothesis? If I had to guess, I think a lot of it has to do with the way that people have initial conversations and the way initial conversations flow. I think, you know, I've done a lot of research with speed dating. And what we're doing in those studies is

we're capturing people's initial conversations. You know, a lot of these conversations, they're really boring. I mean, this is the thing is like first dates. Like, you know, like sometimes there's a tendency to think they're really sad. sexy. That's not, no, it's like people finding something to talk about. And but when they hit something, it can be really magical. Why was it, we both know Bob from, you know, a previous class together? Bob's not that important. He's maybe not even that good a friend, but he was enough of something to connect over that it sent people in a good direction. So I think these like luck with initial conversations is part of it. I would not be surprised if there are preferences that people have that are simply

impossible to verbalize. We don't even know we have them. But when we meet certain people, there are nonverbal things that appeal to us in certain ways, maybe the way they smell. I mean, they can be a bunch of different things here that we don't have language for that can explain why, right, everybody else thinks this person's a seven, but I think they're a 10. Those would be some of my guesses, but again, I'm speculating here. Are we more likely to be attracted to somebody if they subconsciously remind us of one of our parents? You know, there was some work on this like 10, 20 years ago that suggested that they would use facial morphs so you didn't know what was happening, right? They were like morph your, you know, somebody's face with a parent and that is what they show.

Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you tended to be more attracted. I know, I know. Yeah. Is it a genetic relatedness mechanism or is it a familiarity? It's probably like what is familiar. That's been proven like time and time and time again. I think that's right. Which is I think tricky when we talk about, oh, this person reminds me my mom or my dad. Often it's in bad ways. Because it's like I became familiar with these toxic patterns of my childhood and now I'm repeating

them in my adulthood. Have you found that the research bears that out that were kind of attracted sometimes to the very thing that we should not be? To some extent, I mean, that certainly can happen. But on average, like, when you start looking at, like, childhood factors that predict what we do later in life, like, I mean, there are associations there, but they tend to be pretty modest. And again, I look at this as mostly a good sign because it means that, like, for people who grew up with an anxious attachment style or an avoid an attachment style, those are. Yeah, those things can really shift depending on the experiences that you've had in the meantime.

Sometimes that can be bad if what that means is that you went through an awful breakup or somebody cheated on you and now you're feeling really avoidant. That direction can happen, but it can also be the case that you've been avoided for a long time. But you get in a relationship with somebody who makes you feel secure and you'll start to feel less avoidant in that relationship. And then that will cascade forward to help you become a more secure person. Which is hopeful for any of us who had like a bad child. Exactly. Exactly. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have lead levels above California's Prop 65 safety limits? And in some cases, they have more than 10 times over.

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Compatibility is this huge spectrum from being extremely compatible to extremely incompatible. But loving, close, committed relationships, they are rare. Like, you actually won't get all that many in the course of your life. I mean, if you're lucky, you'll have a few. So it's hard to look at that and then claim that, like, well, like, we can always take an incompatible pair and make them compatible. I think if you've been compatible at some point in the past and things have deteriorated, I'm more hopeful. Wait, what makes people incompatible in the first place? This is another one of the great mysteries.

All the things that we think should generate compatibility really don't seem to matter all that much. Wait, when you say the things that we think should, like I think, I don't know, values, I think politics, I think wanting the same things in life. I think being probably similar levels of attractive, do those things matter? Unfortunately, none of these things end up predicting all that much. So here's the kicker. We end up with people who are similar to us, right? We end up with people who have similar values and similar politics and people who are like similar levels of attractiveness.

But the extent to which we are similar to another person doesn't really predict what's going to happen to that relationship in the future, right? So a mismatch couple is no more or less likely to break up than a mismatch couple. than a matched couple. A mismatched pair isn't all that much more likely to like each other in the first place. And that's one that is really shocking because you think, like,

if I met somebody with really different politics than me, like I would not like that person. But the trick is that people who are really dissimilar, they just tend not to meet each other. Oh. Right? They're never really meeting in the first place. But if they do meet,

they're equally likely to maybe have a spark. This is what we've seen in the data. There are no studies that have been like, let me get the most right-leaning people I can find from the southeastern U.S. Let me get the most left-leaning people I can find from the West Coast and introduce them to each other and see what happens. My guess is that if you ask people to predict the level of vitriol and then you looked at what those interactions were actually like, people would overestimate how much these people

would dislike each other. But nobody's done that. And when you look at the people who have actually met each other out there in the real world, you know, what you're really seeing are differences of like, this person is super lefty and she's dating a libertarian. And what they do is politics is just not something they focus on. It's not something that's a core part of their relationship. They downplay it.

They even maybe downplay the dissimilarity. So on paper, they look really dissimilar, but ask them, I don't know, we pretty much believe. leave the same things. And they'll spout off one or two issues that they do agree on. And this is the kind of motivated reasoning that people engage in. And this is why it's so hard to figure out before two people meet and start interacting who's going to like whom because we get all this freedom to interpret people's traits in different ways. So I just want to ground that for somebody listening. If you are dating and you have a list of things that you're looking for and a partner, Should you just throw that away?

I would try to be a little less rigid with it, certainly. I mean, the issue is this, is that when people create those lists, I'm sure they're creating lists of good things. If I happened to, and we've done this experiment, where we take your list and we swap it out with somebody else's, and then you meet their ideal partner, and you like that person just as much. So that's a thing. It's like you order it at a restaurant. like the waiter switch the dishes and you kind of don't know. That's pretty good.

It's pretty good too. You know, if you got a list and it makes you happy, I mean, go nuts. But if you find that it's restricting you, that's bad. Look around a little bit more broadly. Like, date from a wider pool to the extent that you're using filters on the apps and stuff like that. But I do put that in a different category of like human intuition, the human matchmaker, the share from Clueless. like somebody who like knows how to bring people together. I have more optimism about that.

Share from Clueless ended up with her stepbrother, though. That is very true. Which I've always found as a Paul Rudd fan and an Alicia Silverstone fan, I'm just like, he is her stepbrother. It is an unusual choice. Not related, but you know, not ideal. Is there research on how often people regret it if they end a long-term relationship? The deep, long-term regret of, like, I made a terrible life choice, I would say that's pretty

uncommon. It's not that it never happens, but it's uncommon because with enough time, most people will do the work, do the explanation for themselves, the motivated reasoning, and I don't use that term in a derogatory way. I think it's a wonderful thing to engage in the motivated reason. reasoning where you essentially convince yourself that, you know what, not being with this person anymore is good for me. It's very important that people go through that. So there's almost this really important component of like, we're stressing over these life decisions. Is this the one?

Should I stay with them? But actually we're going to post facto rationalize whatever decision we end up making. People are pretty good at that. Not everybody, not all the time. But it's often what people are trying to do. Like people want coherent. They want their choices leading up to this point to have been the good ones. And when we're wrestling with something that maybe wasn't the best choice, what we're often searching for are either how do I fix this or how do I find ways of explaining that I did do the right thing? Again, because I'm not an economist because I'm a psychologist. I think this is a good thing.

I think it's good on average that people are able to do this. But I also think it's good to know that we do this so we don't get too deletious. by like our own brilliance. Like, no, like, I'm very happy in my career and my home and where I live and everything else. And of course, a lot of that is because I've convinced myself of various things. But that's okay. Well, and I like it because it lets us stress out a little bit less in the moment of making a decision. Like trust your future self to find a way to rationalize this. Yeah. Affective forecasting. This is like one of the biggest social psychological phenomenals. I mean, we just think that the bad things are going to be bad forever.

And the bad things can be bad, but just for a lot less time than we think they're going to be bad. That's actually so comforting. Yeah. Okay. This is a listener question. I've been with my boyfriend for two years, and I'm still unsure if he's the one. He'd be the most amazing father and life partner. We want a similar future.

Our values align. Yet I worry that our banter is always off. We don't laugh much, and our personalities don't sink at times. What holds the most weight here? I was worried about what the butt was going to be in that sentence. and then it came, and I don't know, I wasn't too worried about it. Like, I'm very encouraged by the level of sort of long-term thinking that was in the first part of the question.

And that is usually one of the most powerful signs that this is a relationship worth keeping. And not that the other things can be fixed easily, but just the simple fact that you're acknowledging, like, hey, here are some areas of our relationship that I wish could be better. And I don't think there's anything immutable about, wait, what were the challenges again? It was our banter is off. We don't laugh much and our personalities don't sink at times. I'm wondering if like movies, TV shows, et cetera, have skewed or idea of what those interactions are supposed to look like.

Yeah. Like if we think we're supposed to be in sort of like an Aaron Sorkin movie where we're like ba-pah, you know, all the time with these witty, funny remarks, you know? And that's not most people's, we're all living in the real world. Yeah, if that's something you really want, but you have that in a relationship with a friend, like, that's okay. Like, your partner doesn't have to do all the things perfectly. Like, a little bit of diversification is okay. No relationship is going to have all of the pieces in that sense.

You just wanted to have enough that you, like, engage in that kind of long-term thinking. So the word, like, the question was, what holds the most weight here? And you would circle the, like, we want a similar. future part. You'd say that holds the most weight. I would definitely circle that. Did sex come up there? Can we just assume like sex is good? No, but we can talk about sex. Yeah, I mean, I would. We want a similar future and we're having good sex? Yeah. These things would be pretty core. I would focus on those more than things like banter, yeah. Do you think movies and TV shows skew our idea of what good sex is? That's a good question. Sometimes he did rivalry definitely raise the bar. But like,

Like also there, I read some article about all of the women who were dissatisfied in their relationships after watching heated rivalry because they're like, I want to be wanted like that. Right, right. Stories make us think and make us wonder and search for new possibilities. Sex depicted on screen, it can be hot. It can get us to think about sex in new ways to realize that there are things that we found appealing that we had never realized before. And of course, there are also lots of dangers in showing us unrealistic things or things that

seem like it would be appealing to us, but wouldn't be appealing to the other gender. And I'm thinking about the deluge of porn online and the way porn is often depicted. So these things can go in either direction. Probably the most central thing is to just, like, be clear that if you watch the rivalry and you realize like, oh, like, could we have that? Hopefully you feel comfortable in like in a place where you could bring that up in your relationship and be like, okay, I know like the sex isn't going to be like that exactly. I know we're not going to be gay hockey players.

Right. But what could we take from this? Exactly. You prepared two truths and a lie for me. Yes, I did. Here we go. Similarity predicts attraction. Beauty is mostly in the eye of the beholder.

Men and women have very similar partner preferences. Okay. I think the lie is similarity predicts attraction because beauty is in the eye of the holder and men and women do, what was the last one? The third one was men and women have very similar partner preferences. Despite us thinking that they might be different. Am I correct? Yeah, yeah, you got it.

Okay, so dive into the last one a little bit for me because I do think that's a big part of the online conversation is like women want a provider and men want a soft girl who's like nurturing and taking care of the home. Is that true? They think it. That's what people say. But when you look at what actually appeals to men and women, you don't see much in the way of gender differences. I think the provider one is the one that shocks people the most.

Where you clearly see gender differences are on things like, hey, how important is earning potential to you and a partner? How important is ambition to you in a partner? Yeah, women will say they care about that more than men. It's not real high on anybody's lists on average, but you see that gender difference there. this was one of the first things we looked at with speed dating. We've since done it in a bunch of other contexts. But what you do is you look to see, okay, so how much you actually care about ambition? And in speed dating, it's a great setup for this because you're going to meet, let's say, 10 people,

and some of them are going to be more ambitious than others. So I can look to see, hey, did you tend to prefer the ambitious guys over the less ambitious guys? So we might call that your revealed preference. Like what did your liking for these actual men reveal about the traits you cared about? And what we see time and time again is that ambition, it's a little bit of an aphrodisiac. It's not huge. But we tend to like ambitious people. But it is just as true for men as it is for women.

Which is really different than what I've heard. I have a friend who won't put Ph.D. in her dating profile because she's worried that it turns men off. Yeah. There is plenty of evidence that when you look at like, that kind of scripted information that the gender differences emerge. It's a funny way if your friend's plan

is to not put it on the dating profile but then have it come out on the date in some ways maybe that is the best way to do it because you're avoiding the gendered ideas that appear when we're evaluating people on paper. Wait, this is so, so you're saying because we think we have these preferences,

when we are evaluating them on paper, we actually kind of do. But if you put us in a room together that goes away. Is it kind of the same thing with height too? Women think they care about height more than men do, but then put them in a room with actual men. And like height is a small predictor of attraction,

but it's not the biggest deal by far. So if she gets on the date with the guy who's 5 foot 9, that has a much better chance of going well. Wait, so should men lie about their height on dating now? No, the lying itself then becomes part of the problem, right? So dating apps should just take height off of there is what we're kind of saying. I really should. I really think they should.

It's a near zero predictor of like anything long term. It's not even that powerful predictor of initial attraction. It's like a 55-45 situation. It's like not that big. Why is it on there? Yeah. And because it's on there, it's gotten this just like huge outsized. I have so many friends who are dating and one of the first things they say is like it has

to be over six feet. And I'm just like, how will that impact your life in any way, shape, or And then what they say to me, so give me a good response for this. Give me a succinct response. They say, I can't help what I'm attracted to. I highly doubt that you are actually attracted that much more powerfully to men over six feet than under six feet. I just, I don't buy it. So I would say that is your stated preference.

Let's see what your revealed preference is. That's right. That's right. Hey, do the experiment on yourself. Go on some day. Intentionally sample the range. See how much you like the men who are tall versus a little bit short, a little bit short, first little bit short.

I can only say what it shows in the population. The population, those are small effects. Height is not a huge predictor. We talk about the movie Materialists on our show. And, you know, that's one where, I mean, spoilers for materialists, but, you know, the Pedro Pascal character, he gets surgery to make himself taller. And we are led to believe that this led to a major increase in his desirability. That isn't how real life works.

Is there any kind of like transitive property of like Pedro Pascal got more confident? And that did make him more attractive. Taller guys are reinforced by society that they're super hot. So that makes them more confident. So that makes them more attractive. There's a thing that happens to the people in adolescence, right? You go to summer camp one summer. You look like a young boy.

You come back the next year and you look a little bit less like a young boy. And there can be a confidence that comes from that. So that I buy. but that there are like all of these good traits associated with high, especially men, you just don't see this in the data. One of the things that I think is a reason why women seem to be looking for providers right now is because women are really tired. And I feel like they're like, well, I'm doing a lot of the mental load.

I'm doing a lot of the emotional load. I'm also making a lot of money. I'm taking care of so many things. So if you're not going to bring anything else to the table, can you at least bring the money component to the table? but you find that that's not really bearing out in research that that... It is a modest predictor of things like attraction and desirability. It's just not that huge.

And I think it's maybe more intuitive these days that men also potentially find that appealing, that the act she's educated and she's going to earn two, at least in terms of education these days, with women earning more advanced degrees. When couples are forming, the woman is more educated than the man on average. So I think these things appeal to men too.

But I hear this idea, I get it, that it's like, well, what exactly are you bringing to the table? Yeah. Like, it's almost like if society hasn't trained you into the emotional vulnerability or the caretaking of the children, then like at least be the provider because otherwise I'm doing everything. Yeah. This mindset tends to be associated with not so great outcomes for relationships.

If you come into the formation of a relationship, thinking about it as an exchange of goods, right? Like, what do I have? What do you have? Like, are we matching up and does this even out? Like, I get, hey, we're trying to run a household here. How are we going to make this manageable for both of us? How are we both going to get our needs met? That totally makes sense.

But on the attraction side, this isn't what sparks attraction. And I think if people have this like, here's what I'm worth and like I got to get somebody with all the good attributes, I worry that this kind of warps the attraction process. That attraction is more about feeling like I enjoy being around this person. I feel like they get me. We share reality. like when I disclose something vulnerable, they reacted in the way that I'd want somebody to react. Now, if he's not emotionally available and he's not reacting to your self-disclosures and he's not

self-disclosing himself, well, yeah, that guy kind of sounds like a dud. I would not want to be dating that guy. But it's a different calculus. It's not because I need the person that has the right traits. It's, I want to be with somebody where we are able to connect in this way. Maybe he's actually not that emotionally available a guy, but you've now seen signals that he can be emotionally available with you. That's great. That's what you care about. It does make sense.

And that's sort of an overarching takeaway I have from all of your research is like you're looking for those unique dynamics of your relationship. Like the more unique traits that you particularly are attracted to, the more unique conversations you guys have. That's the goal there. Right. Right. I think that is a really key thing to be thinking about and to be looking for rather than like if you're picking a partner to like impress your best friend, right? Somebody that's going to look really good on paper, I worry that this is not a good recipe for a long term healthy relationship.

You are an evolutionary psychologist. Can you speak directly to the side of the internet that says men evolved to be providers and women evolved to be caretakers. Yes. Which camera should I look into? Does I deliver this message? Okay. This is nonsense. You all need to stop it with this.

Humans are remarkable. I mean, men are so different than the males of the other ape species. You would not trust a male ape around an infant without its mother around. They can't be trusted. They can be violent. men, human men, can be amazing child caretakers. This is part of our evolved heritage. We evolved to be this way.

Over the last several million years, the women who wanted to mate with us, they wanted the gentler guy, that they could trust around offspring that we're going to contribute to the long-term, very arduous, very difficult process of raising humans from these little tiny things to these very big things

that can go out and get all these calories on there, own. So this is what it means to be a human man, and a lot of it has to do with caretaking, caring about the next generation. And on the provisioning side, I got news. Like, for millions of years, the women were going out and getting basically 50% of the calories too. Now, it's a different kind of work, okay? Coordinated hunting, the way hunting happens in groups, yeah. More commonly when you look at hunter-gatherer societies, that's the men that are doing that, those calories are really important. But so are all the things that the women are doing. So of course men would have wanted women as partners who were resourceful, who could work well with others, who could be providers

in that sense, too. The evolutionary rationale for why these things should be different has never actually been all that well grounded in any of the anthropology. And it also so happens that when we look with the psychology, too, when we look at what men and women actually like, once they're meeting people face to face, those gender differences are really, really tiny. Thank you for setting me up for that. Okay. We are going to play a little game called underrated versus overrated. So I'm going to basically say a bunch of relationship concepts, and you can tell me whether

you think that they're underrated or overrated. Playing hard to get. Overrated. And I think largely because the reason that we think playing hard to get works is because attractive people in general tend to be more selective and we interpret their selectivity as contributing to why they're attractive. They were attractive, which let them be selective. They weren't selective, which made them more attractive.

Right, exactly. You don't want to seem desperate. I mean, seeming desperate is a bad sign. You can be attractive. And if you seem like you're willing to date everybody, the people are going to pick up on that pretty quickly. But yeah, overrated. The five love languages.

Okay. this is overrated with two caveats. One is that they're all like nice things to do. Like, I don't know, like touch is good and like giving gifts is good. And like, you should definitely have words of affirmation. Like these are nice things to do for your partner. But this idea that like, oh, my partner doesn't do the right love language, like there's no evidence of any of that. And the second caveat is this is just like a meme now.

Like, I don't know, like watching documentaries is my love language. But actually, there's a lot of logic there that people can kind of craft in their relationship. What are the ways that they connect? And so, like, with my, you know, my partner is another academic. But our love language is, like, sharing data and graphs with each other. Hot. So, right. You know, it's like, you know, it's 2 o'clock.

You know, I got this beautiful graph. And I'm thinking, I'm like, I don't bring this to dinner. Which is the unique thing, again. though. There you go. Like it needs to be that I would not want to see your graph. And that's exciting that she would. I want to talk about it with you. You know, at a podcast. But like, that is that unique element that you want to show it to her and you know she's going to be uniquely interested in it. It's what we really should be looking for. Exactly. What about the idea that love languages like make us feel understood? Like, oh, I'm showing love in this way. And if they know that I'm showing love in this way,

then they know that that's me showing love. Yeah. I mean, I think. I think. to the sense that this is something that's negotiated, that it's like, I really like it when you do X for me. And then so now when you do X, then it feels like you listened to me and you're being responsive. That's great. It's the responsiveness. That's the thing that matters. I mean, that's another cardinal rule of close relationships. We're happier when we feel like our partner is responsive to us and that they get us. And so if you're using the love languages as a way to get to that, that's fine. So the important thing is also that your partner is like, oh my God, thank you so much for this graph. I like I'm very excited about it. Yes, exactly. Having a spark or instant

chemistry. No, this is definitely overrated in the sense that it's not the most common thing that people experience if you look at the set of people who will become happy couples. It is not the case that the spark is a prerequisite. And I worry, if anything, when we live in a culture of 20-minute coffee dates, expecting the spark means you're not giving people. enough second and third chances. Yeah, does the spark sort of over-benefit extroverts? Probably over-benefits extroverts. It probably over-benefits attractive people, and it under-benefits a lot of people. And a lot of relationships that could have worked if you'd spend more time getting to know the person. I mean, I think part of the thing that we've lost that I really

lament is the ability to date without really dating. Just like getting to know people in groups. Like when people first arrive at college, that's like the, well, we know like most of us are single here. And we know we're like kind of sussing out what's happening. But it's it, but we're not on dates, right? So it takes that pressure off. But now we're getting to know each other over time.

So you make a bad first impression on somebody. You're going to get to make another one. I think there's this idea, though. We're looking for the spark because we're. we're trying to decide, okay, we did a first date, do we want to do a second date, do do you want to do a third date, do want to do a fourth date? Like, how do we know in a world of so many options whether to keep going with this option? This is like time consuming, like your time's limited and what are you going to do?

What we see is that at least your impression will start to stabilize on like the third date. So maybe if you can date fewer people but date them three times, like if you're doing like the traditional dating thing. But you're saying, do a group sport, do a book club, try to find these ways that you're interacting with people over a long period of time that is not dating. Yeah, I mean, go back to college. Yeah, go back to college. I mean, when I was in my 20s, I was in a kickball league in Chicago. And that's a fascinating dynamic because the kickball, it was just an excuse to just hang out with other people. And about half of the league would go to a bar afterwards.

It's about 100 people, but 100 people who are coming from, like, not like wildly different SES, but kind of different. I mean, a lot of those folks didn't have college degrees, but we're all hanging out. And, like, it spawned a lot of relationships just from people kind of getting to know each other over time. And I know things like this still exist. But when people think about dating and how hard dating is, I encourage them to look into those kind of avenues. I mean, maybe a lot of people wouldn't be caught dead playing kickball. I get it.

I know. That's what I struggle with. I have a ton of friends who have met their partner with group sports. Yeah. Which I think is fascinating. Like even in today's day and age. And I have friends who like hate that type of sport thing. They're more introverted. They're not as athletic. And they're like, I like to knit. And like, they're like, where do I find men doing the activities that I like to do? Yeah. Men, you should probably join some knitting clubs. I think that would be a good idea for that. All right. That's a plausible future.

What about having a type? This is also overrated. Now, this one is interesting because I did admit earlier maybe there are like nonverbal types we have that we can't describe. But if what we mean by type is the list. Or like Paul Mezcal is my type. Yeah, I mean like Paul Mescal is your type. So if we got a bunch of men who looked like Paul Mescal,

we're like morphs of Paul Meskell, would you like him more? That's plausible. So I'll throw that in as a caveat that there are physical appearance things that are more impressionistic, but a lot of where our type comes from is just the people that we're surrounded by. So we show in some of our work, like, okay, you might have a type in the sense that you date people who are similarly religious, okay? Maybe they're very religious or not religious at all.

But we also showed that that was entirely explained by just where you live. Who you're exposed to. It was all just who you're exposed to. You aren't dating selectively within the pool of folks that you're meeting. So that's the challenge there. Taking a relationship break. So like taking a pause to gain clarity. Are we talking like 10 minutes?

Are we talking like a week? No, I'm talking like a Ross and Rachel. Like we were on a break. Although I guess that's the most highly contested break of all time. Like taking, like being like or in Texas in the city, Miranda and Steve, like take months apart. And then they're like, we're going to meet up on the Brooklyn Bridge. And if you're there that day, then we're going to give this relationship another shot. Yeah.

If you love it, let it set it free. I am struggling to think of data or studies that would bear on this going totally from gut instinct. I think because we tend to be motivated reasoners, the odds are if you're going to do this kind of break, it's more likely to hasten the end of the relationship than it is to bring you back together. But again, many relationships do go through the ups and downs where people break up for a while. But as like an intentional way of like stress testing, whether this relationship is a good idea, I wouldn't do that. Opposites attract.

No, this is totally overrated. Sorry, Paul Abdul. It's a fine song. It's not true. Couples therapy. Yeah, it's great. Absolutely great. You had some thoughts in your book about when it can be used well and when it can be deployed

less well. Okay, okay. Here are three reasons to go to therapy and two are a good idea and one is a bad idea. So here's a good idea. You go to therapy because you are unhappy about things. You want help, you want a coach for ways that you can approach your life differently. and on average, going to therapy for yourself will make you happier in we think a causal way with your relationships across the board.

Now, again, therapy doesn't have gigantic effects, but it has meaningful effects. So you'll be happier with your kids and you're happy with your parents and happy with your partner too. So that's great. I also do think couples therapy, the right couples therapist, it can work very well by helping people to deconstruct the patterns in their relationships. If both people want to be there, if both people want to work on their relationship, it can be great. The pitfall is the third one, which I think is very tempting, which is our relationship isn't going great. I need you to go to therapy and fix yourself so that you aren't this frustrating person anymore. This is a trap.

this is not really how relationships get fixed. And that's because actually a lot of where relationships go well and go sideways is, again, it's that tangled web that two people create together. If you're not a part of fixing it, I understand you think that your partner is the sole problem here. But if you aren't in there being part of the solution, that's just not all that effective to sort of send your partner away like that and hope that they come back. repaired. So adequately rated. Adequately, yeah, yeah, adequately rated.

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Yeah, this is overrated too. I do believe that uniqueness is very important. But I think it's possible for us to go through our lives and have those unique connections with many, many people. Yeah, that was going to be what I was going to ask. How rare is it to find people that we would be able to build a successful life with? It's pretty rare, but far from the... the one and only or the soulmate trope. It's not like you only get one shot with one person because that person was your soulmate.

I think we can be compatible with a great many people, but the circumstances have to align and the reasons why relationships are rare is because of the circumstances often don't align. What do you mean by that? If you could imagine like all the people you've known, all the people that you've met of your preferred gender. And you've probably really liked some and had a middling reaction to others and really disliked many others. But my guess is that within the pool of the top 20% or 25% of the folks that you have been into, you probably could have crafted a very good relationship with many of them. Had you met at a time when you were both single or both living in the same place or a place in life where

that was a thing you wanted. As long as you're starting to start. starting from a place of like, hey, like, we're kind of into each other. There's a little bit of chemistry here. There's a little bit of a connection here. I think it is possible that lots of great relationships could be crafted from there. But because we live in a linear timeline, like, we only get to attempt that so many times. So that means many of us do have ones that got away. Yeah.

But the ones we have aren't necessarily worse for that. Right. It is certainly captivating to think about how it could have been different. But on average, like, it probably would have been no better and no worse. We can't look at a couple and say, like, it would have been better if he'd married his college girlfriend instead. There's no way to predict that kind of thing. And so that's kind of how I end up here. As long as you have a decent starting point and you can build from there, I'm optimistic about a lot of relationships.

but it's a reason to be, I think, thankful for what you have, but not because this person is like your soulmate exactly. It's because the two of you met each other at the right time, in the right place, and then you managed to build this thing together. I think it's this downstream effect, though, of this optimization culture that we live in where maybe 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you're like, sure, I found this person, how great, we're building a life together. Yeah.

But now you're like, well, is this the best life? Is this the best person? Yeah. I could go on the apps and have access to 10,000 more people. Yeah. How should we think about that? I think that is an incredible observation. It is the optimization culture that leads us to think if we just started with just a little bit more going for us, could we have built something better?

And from all the data I've seen, anything that you would take about two people, how? how they match up whatever is happening in moment one. Yeah, it's going to predict moment two and maybe moment three. But when you're trying to predict what's going to happen years in the future, there was no way to optimize for that at the beginning. What I'm kind of saying is like, I also think red flags are a little overrated for exactly this reason, because somebody might have a set of personality attributes then I don't know, maybe they're a little neurotic, right?

Maybe they're a little emotionally unstable. That is a thing that is true about them. But what will often happen to people with those attributes is that they get in relationships where the relationship itself helps to manage that tendency, whether it's like the partner just reacts to it in a different way, or it doesn't bother the partner, or at least when they're with their partner, they're less emotionally unstable. So this is why these things are so hard to predict early on.

I believe in red flags when you look at the relationship itself. But if you're talking about trying to predict things before you've even started, it's just, it's really, really hard to do. What about the idea that love is a choice, not a feeling? Adequately rated. The seven-year itch. Adequately rated. Yeah, I'm sad to say.

Is there science to it? Yeah. I mean, it's not seven years. That's made up. But it is true that, on average, people are the happiest about their relationships when they first get together. And satisfaction does decline. The nice thing, if you're looking for a silver lining in that, there's also a tendency for middle age to be hard. Forties and 50s are a tough time in general.

So relationships that make it that far so that folks are now entering their 60s, entering retirement, those tend to rebound a bit, in part because life gets a little less hard. Do you think that long-term relationships, marriage, monogamy, have the same value in the modern world as they used to? The marriage component, surely it does not. We see this throughout the Western world, that people are getting married less often. So that's certainly there. Monogamy.

I mean, I do think there are a lot of folks out there sort of practicing Polly, talking about Polly, that are opening people's eyes to different possibilities. I don't think it's for everyone. And I think many people will want to maintain an exclusive monogamous relationship because it's really hard to handle the jealousy. For me is the energy. Like, I'm just like, I don't have time for a relationship.

I don't, I need somebody to explain this to me. Like, how? When? When are you getting the time? Yeah, like, I don't understand that. But I do hear from more people who are like, I just don't, if I don't need a romantic partner to raise a child, if I don't need a romantic partner to provide for me a home or income or anything like that.

Okay. Like what is the value of this relationship anymore in the modern world? Okay. So now we're into the realm where I get bummed out. And I think because I'm somebody who like believes that we are creatures who like need belonging and companionship and attachment, that if we aren't getting those needs met somewhere that we're going to find that something's lacking. And I'm not saying it's got to be a romantic relationship, but I think for a lot of people it will be, relationships give us a lot.

That is not exactly tangible. That sense of support, that sense of companionship is really, really important. That is the lion's share of what we get from relationships. Yeah, there are certainly practical components to, like, and if you're living in a household with somebody managing that is is a real challenge. But a lot of what we get from relationships is it's the intangible stuff. That's still pretty key. And I don't think most people are going to do well living a life without true close companionship. Yeah, that's the thing I always say is I don't think it has to be a romantic relationship. But I do think if you're going to not have that, you really need to be prioritizing how you're bringing that sense of attachment in otherwise.

Right. Trusting the ick. If it's like a date one or two, I know. It's overrated because many, many times people will discover that they like somebody more as they get to know them and what seemedicky at first, like you eventually stop noticing. But it's easier said than done if this is like somebody that you've known for a while or, you know, you've been dating for a little while and you just repeated.

have that sense of ick, I can't be the one to sit here and be like, I'll just get over it. I've read research that we're less likely to get the ick when we are in love with somebody. They'll do like subjectively annoying stuff. They'll burp. They'll be like a little gross and we'll be like, oh, that's so cute. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. It's not like the ick itself is bad, but if the ick appears, it could be a sign that your emotions are different than maybe you would want them to do. I think it's a perfect way of thinking about it. And that's another reason, too, why it's like, don't trust it at first because, like, don't know. We're still information gathering. Yeah. If you're asking yourself whether to leave, you already know. It's overrated. And the reason why is because I think the thought experiments about, like, yeah, but what would it be like to be without this person? I worry sometimes people are

like a little too afraid of that. Like they don't want to touch that. It feels like a third rail that if they're starting to have those kinds of thoughts, it means that something is wrong. Like, I would rather sit here and normalize that and say, like, it's okay to wonder what your life would be like if your partner wasn't there, what it would be like in different circumstances. That doesn't necessarily mean anything bad. If you're, like, fantasizing about it, if you're really wishing for it, that's one thing. But just, just like thinking about it, playing the thought experiment, that is an okay experiment to run on yourself to actually, like, do some stress checks of like, you know, know where I would be happier, though? I would be happier in this domain.

Like, I would have more time to do X if I wasn't doing his laundry for him. Maybe we solved the laundry problem first before we, like, blow everything up. Like it can point to things you could perhaps work on in your relationship. You can use it as information. I love that. Yeah. What is a normal amount of work that a healthy relationship requires and how do you know when it's too much work and a sign that you just shouldn't be together?

Oh. Relationships take a lot of work, but I would just replace work with time. right? Because it doesn't it doesn't have to feel like we're hashing stuff out and it's exhausting. It can be fun. And in fact, you kind of hope that a lot of it is fun. But I see a lot of couples who like especially once kids enter into the picture and it gets complicated, we got to divvy up the tasks. And like it's more efficient for me to work out like while you're doing this. And so in many ways, like the first thing that gets sacrifice is that couple time together, that is not great.

And I think it's important to reestablish some of that time together. But again, I wouldn't necessarily call it work. But you have to at least do the work of like building in. How are we going to spend time around each other? I'm picturing the person crying who's like, it shouldn't be this hard. It should feel easy. Like if you're with the right person, it should. should feel really easy.

Do you think there's truth to that? Maybe. If what it means is like that everything feels like a struggle and everything feels like conflict, yeah, as a relationship's researcher and probably a lot of couples therapists too, it's like we always want to come in with the assumption that the relationship can be maintained. You can do some fixes and you can help it. But, of course, many relationships break up and then people will go on to look back and like, actually I'm glad I got out of that relationship.

And they might even say, like, I might have stayed in that relationship for too long. So if what somebody is experiencing is a lot of conflict and they feel like that conflict, not only is it exhausting, but it's like sapping the joy out of other things in their life. Yeah, that's a bad sign. What are your favorite fixes for an alien relationship? I am a big fan of rather than a, he's just the kind of guy who has this personality, these preferences or she is just the kind of person who does this, instead think about how did we create this pattern,

this situation where you do X, I tend to respond with Y, and then that is where things tend to go off the rails. And can we adjust that? So like looking for those like if then patterns, that relationships just naturally coalesce around and seeing if those can be addressed. There's an old adage that it's better in a relationship if the man likes the woman a little bit more.

Do you think the research bears that out? No. If you look at the, like, how happy the man is with the relationship, how happy the woman is with the relationship, both of those things are going to predict longevity about equally well. Is there a difference between how happy queer couples are versus straight couples? Not really. Like in general, when you look at things like satisfaction, how couples handle conflict, it really is pretty. similar across the board in queer relationships and straight relationships. Like the big differences tend to be things like the way housework is divvied up.

It just tends to be more even in queer couples than in households that are mixed gender relationships or households where like there's one primary breadwinner. And didn't your research find that people in general like to sleep with women more? Like women are more generous lovers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has just been kind of a fascinating thing. And that this explains a lot of what's going on in the casual sex space. Because I think for a long time, there was a tendency to look at the fact that, like, men are more interested in casual sex than women.

And, like, the attributions were about what's going on in the men. And I've done some of that here, too. I mean, I do think, you know, men have a slightly stronger sex drive and that men are generally more looking for, connection than women are. But on top of all of that, there was a confound in that research, which is that, you know, when you look at who men were, you know, they were being asked, oh, would you like to have casual sex with this person? That was always a woman. And when you were asking the women that, would you like to have casual sex with this person? That person was always a man. And everybody assumes that women are generally better lovers, especially in casual

sex situations. So this was sort of a classic confound in this kind of work when you realize like, actually women are not so against casual sex if they're into women and the casual sex partner would be a woman. Yeah. So the research found that bisexual women had sort of an equal sex drive to men, right, if they were like getting to have sex with a woman. Right, right, right, exactly, exactly.

Far more interesting. I just wanted on camera that women are better and bad. Yeah. If you look at lesbian couples or bisexual women who are with women, they're much more likely to experience orgasms in those relationships than they are if they're with a man. The orgasm gap is real. So the takeaway is like if men want more casual sex, they should be better in bed. Yes.

Now the question is, how do you advertise that without seeming creepy? Nobody knows. But this would be the thing that men need to be working on. Yeah, for sure. Is there a way that we can know how. attractive we are. Other than like resurrect hot or not.com. Oh my god. I put my 2002. I put my photo up on that at an age. I definitely should not have put my photo up on that. What I'm always tempted to say is like in the end it doesn't matter all that much. Yes,

it matters in the sense that for some people it's very easy to get dates and for some people it's harder. And I don't want to diminish that. But long-term relationship satisfaction, it just doesn't matter all that much how attractive you are, how consensually desirable you are. What if we're trying to figure out how picky we can be? I want to know when the research says

I should settle. I'm out there dating. This person is not my dream person, but like they're good enough and I maybe want kids and I want to build a life and I don't know whether I should settle. If it's settling like

I don't really like this person like a lot, I had more powerful feelings of attraction to my boyfriend in college. Yeah. That makes me nervous. But if it's like, I feel like I'm settling because he doesn't have everything I would have drawn up on paper. He's like five, six.

He has a snaggle tooth. Yeah. You're like maybe. My friends wouldn't be into him. Like, no, but that's good. That's good. That's what we're looking for. Exactly.

You want the person that you like more than everybody else and importantly likes you more than they like other people and more than other people. like you. It also occurs to me that modern society is making that harder because like the Instagram of it all, we're wanting to show off our partners. We're wanting to play into the perception of having a partner much more than the experience of having a partner than ever before in history. Yeah, this one is really strange that I'm always tempted to say like, yeah, but relationships, it doesn't matter. The popularity doesn't matter. But then to the extent that like your Instagram stats are part of what you're bringing into a partnership or any kind of attraction scenario that really does upend some of this.

And I confess, I don't love it. What do we do about it? To the extent that one can take the lesson in the heart, it's like, ultimately, at the end of the day, what a relationship is, is you and this other person within the sphere that you create together. That is ultimately the thing that actually matters. All the other people, all the noise will eventually fade. and you'll be left with this other person. And is that somebody that you want to be with, that you want to be around?

That you get joy out of experiencing life with this person. What's one thing that you would advise a woman who's trying to find a good partner and they're out there dating in their 30s? What's one thing you would advise them to do differently? Date fewer people but spend more time with each person, I think, is a good way for us to be collectively pushing. To the stand that you're like spending time getting to know people casually. I mean,

we talked about the kickball situation. But if that's not for you, there are a million other ways. The all male knitting club. Yeah, the all male knitting club. I mean, if guys would just get into like yoga and stuff.

I mean, I have a girlfriend who met her now husband at a Pilate studio. Yeah. She like looked over the reformer next to her and there's like a hottie. Yeah. And also, can we just say like men, if you want a partner,

go to Pilates. Yeah. I know, yeah. And the thing is, it's going to be the most awkward the first time. Yeah. And then the next time we'll be a little less awkward. And you'll get ripped. Yeah.

Yeah, that also helps. Your posture will get so much better. What, okay, is it different advice for a man listening who's in their 30s and looking for a partner? I think for men, there's more of a tendency to think, like, okay, if I got to meet women, I got to go to bars and I got to chat them up with pickup lines. If you can make that work, that's great for you. But that is not the only way.

And I think that is not the way for most people. Like impressing strangers, especially if you're a man, it's really hard to do. And do not lock yourself into that strategy. Apps, are we like hard know on that? Is there a better way to navigate them? I think they're here to stay and they're not going anywhere. So if you're going to be using them, try to give people more than just a 20-minute coffee date. And try not to pay attention to, like, height and the other.

Yeah. Like try not to use the filters. That don't really matter. Yeah. Based on the sides, who do you think are the best and worst TV and movie couples? So I'm going to point to La La Land. Mm. And now if anybody's seen La La Land, they're like, but they don't end up together.

Spoiler alert. Right. Spoiler alert. Or do they? Because the thing is, we see the alternate timeline where if they've made different choices along the way, then the relationship would have turned out differently. So I love their dynamic when it's going well. And what do you love about their dynamic when they are doing well? Is it that they're taking interest in each other's lives? Exactly.

They do really well with the mutual support thing, right? Because she's trying to be a playwright, and he's super supportive of that. And he's, you know, trying to be a musician, and she's super supportive of that. She's very clear early on in the movie that she doesn't like jazz. And yet she is, willing to let him talk about it enough, and it's sort of adorable enough when his love of jazz is coming through, that she starts to see it that way. So I think that's where it goes well. And where the relationship goes sideways is fascinating, too, because what starts to happen is that

the way he feels about music starts to change, and it's not consistent with the understanding that they had earlier on. He joins the band with. He joins the band. with John Legend, and they're kind of playing this more like pop fusion stuff. It's not like the classic jazz that he loves. And he's starting to enjoy himself up there. And she doesn't get it because he doesn't bring her in to his changing perception about himself. And this is where a lot of the conflict comes from.

So our takeaways there is as you change and grow and evolve as a person, which we inevitably all will. Bring your partner into that. I think that's really good advice. in terms of my least favorite movie couples. I mean, Ross and Rachel are up there for me. He's literally like, if you want to be with me, I've had my same job forever. Yeah, right.

Like, he should have gone to Paris. I think that is the support of the Blossomies. Like, he should have gone to Paris. Yep, that's a good one. I point to sleepless in Seattle, which is sort of all the bad tropes wrapped up into one movie. and the thing is, is like, Nora Ephron, like, she knew she was doing it. It was kind of one gigantic trolling exercise to, like, how many, like, romantic ideas can I stick into this movie and get people to buy into it? This is a couple.

They have not spent any time together, and they are on screen together for, like, 15 seconds. And we're supposed to think this is happily ever after. So it just, it leans way too much into the soulmate, one and only ideas that that movie is. is really something. I want you to speak directly to a person listening who cannot figure out if they are with the right person, if they should stay in the relationship or leave it. What would be your best advice for them? There's a tendency to want to talk to other people, like get them to weigh in.

That can be useful, but also, like, you know more than other people do. So trusting your own gut on these things, but also giving time. for your feelings about this to evolve. It's especially useful to think about things like, would you want your current partner to find somebody else and be happy with somebody else? Like, that was one kind of thought experiment that I remember running through in situations like that.

And it's kind of related to some of the commitment stuff we talked about earlier, that, like, long-term thinking. So if you start engaging in, like, long-term ideas where you're imagining, like, What if I were with somebody else? What are they were with somebody else? We would like that would be better. I think that would probably be the sign.

But if when you try to imagine a future, if the thought of this person being with somebody else is demoralizing, upsetting, you'd feel like you'd feel sad, jealous like you've missed out, then I think that would push you in the other direction. Okay, I have a speed round for you. Okay, ready. What is the hottest take you have about dating? The search for red flags is probably not.

a great use of your time. You're mostly going to be grasping at straws. Warning signs don't usually appear that early and like focus on green flags instead. What's your number one green flag that we could look for when dating? Are you laughing and having a good time with this person? Are you enjoying yourself? Or even like did they make you feel like the best version of you? Like I would like to focus on stuff like that rather than red flags. What's your hottest take that you have about relationships. Great people are sometimes in terrible relationships, and terrible people are sometimes in great relationships. And like so much of what makes a relationship work or not is not about the personality of the qualities of the two people. It's all in the thing that they've constructed together.

What's one thing that people commonly do in dating a relationship that you would never do, knowing what you know as a relationship scientist? The tendency to look at another person's relationship and to make assumptions about what it must be like to be in that relationship, boy, when you look at the distinction between what observers think about what's going on in a relationship and what those two people involved think about that relationship, you see major, major differences. If the thing looks really good, you know, beware of those assumptions. If the thing looks really bad, beware of those assumptions, too.

What's a piece of research that really changed your mind about something? This new data showing that men just seem to need relationships more than women across the board. This was this fascinating paper that came out recently making this point. These authors, they did a great job of synthesizing all this information, explaining how, yeah, men are more likely to want to get into a relationship in the first place. They're more likely to want to maintain it. And they're less likely to want it to end. And the connection between that and like the modern,

male loneliness struggles, I just found that very compelling. I think that's a very good diagnosis of one of the major problems of our time. And you think the solution to that is? I think we got to bring back spaces for men to be able to connect with other men. And in ways that are not like the cesspool of the internet. Like a board game bar? Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, Robert Putnam said this, you know, 25 years ago, like we're losing

the spaces where people come together. Like third spaces generally. Exactly. But women have kind of done a better job of recreating those than men have. Yeah, I think that's right. To mention knit. Yep. There you go.

This goes back to knitting. If you couldn't say it depends. What's the one relationship rule that is true for almost everybody? I mean, I think we need to feel like our partners get us, that they understand us, and that they're going to be there if we need them. And I think if you're listening to this, trying to figure out if you're in the right relationship, if you're missing that, that would be something to examine.

Exactly. Finish this sentence. People would be so much happier in their love lives if they just stopped. Dating in this mercenary way where what you're trying to do is like maximize the attributes of the person that you acquire and instead like try to have fun with other people, I think that would be a lot more pleasant. This can be in the realm of relationships or just in general in life. What's one habit that has changed your life?

When I got a dog, when I was about 30, boy, did that change my daily routine? Not in the way having kids did, but it meant that, like, I was up and I was out and I was walking, you know, by 7.30 every day. And, you know, I was always pretty good at structuring my day, you know, making sure I eat meals and stuff like that. but it was something about that, like that early morning walk and having another creature to take care of, I understand not everybody's a place in life where they can have a dog or have a pet or certainly have kids. But wow, that kind of structure that comes from that, I just found it to be great in all the ways.

It's so interesting. I think often about how my anxiety tells me that I should eliminate all structure for my life so that whatever my moods are, I can kind of do what those tell me to do at any moment. But actually, I feel so much mentally healthier, the more structure I have. Yes. We love to end with one action step people can take the second that they turn off this podcast. So if people want to feel different in their relationships or in their dating life, I would just like love one action step they could take today. For people who are in relationships, if there are things you want to fix, again, interrogated from a place of patterns and structure.

What are the if-then rules that are happening in your relationship that are creating the thing you don't like? And then work with your partner to change how those sequences happen. So for people who are single in dating, if you feel like you're meeting a lot of people and none of them are really doing it for you, like totally change up how you are meeting partners. So if, you know, you've been using the apps, like try activities. If you've been trying activities, try different activities. Try the weirdest thing that you can come up with. But structures are really, really important when it comes to dating when it comes to a relationship.

So I try to target those. If people want more from you, tell us about your podcast, your book. Where can people find you? Yes. So my podcast is called Love Factually. And I work with Eli Finkel. And we talk about relationship science as depicted in various movies. So you can check that out.

Just find a movie that you know or hate and listen to us. Talk about it. And my book is called Bonded by Evolution, and that is out now. So you can check that out too. Amazing. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.

That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening on Apple or watching on Spotify or YouTube. You can subscribe or follow so our next episodes get sent directly to your feed. If you like this episode, leave a comment or better yet, send it to a friend, a coworker, a parent, or somebody else that you think might love it. All right, I love you. Thank you so much for listening. and I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.

Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. Did you know that the average half-life of caffeine is five hours? Meaning if you drink a coffee or matcha at 3 p.m., you still have half of that caffeine in your system five hours later when you try to go to bed,

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